Microsoft's big plan to dominate Android and win mobile is coming together

Microsoft has signed up more than 70 smartphone manufacturers to preinstall its services onto phones, up from 20 in May last year.

In a blog post announcing the milestone, Nick Parker, the man in charge of relationships with smartphone makers, wrote that Microsoft had been "working hard to win over the hearts and minds of our partners and customers," culminating in 74 original equipment manufacturers signing up.

The partners, which include Acer, LG, Samsung, and Sony, will ship Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, and Skype on devices starting soon.

Essentially, Microsoft will have its most important products on millions of new phones.

This is an important move for the company because it means the failure of Windows Phone matters less, and it aligns with CEO Satya Nadella's vision for how Microsoft will function in the future.

Nadella told BuzzFeed that individual sales did not matter if other people supported Microsoft's services.

"If you think of this more like a graph," he said, "these [devices] are all nodes. Sometimes the user will use all of these devices ... sometimes they'll use only one or two of our devices and some other platforms — so be it."

Microsoft now charges users for a subscription to Office, called Office 365, which totals about $90 (£62) a year. The company is also giving away Windows 10 free, rather than charging customers for a license per copy.